Inside the Braves with MLB.com's Mark Bowman

Chipper and Heyward return

For the first time in a week, Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez was able to put both Chipper Jones and Jason Heyward in the same lineup. Now he can only hope Jones exits Tuesday afternoon’s game confident that he will not need to undergo arthroscopic surgery to repair the small meniscus tear in his right knee.

“Two days ago, I was 50 percent,” Jones said. “Yesterday was probably 80 and I’m better than I was yesterday. Feeling good today, I would rather go out and test it against a lefty today as opposed to going on the road out to the west coast and finding out it’s not OK and having fly all the way back and have surgery.”

Jones was skeptical when Braves doctors told him he might be able to avoid undergoing the surgery. The 39-year-old third baseman said Sunday and Monday that he feared he might be delaying the inevitable by simply trying to medicate the ailment with the cortisone injections he received after Sunday’s MRI exam showed the small meniscus tear.

Thus before the Braves embarked on a seven-game road trip that includes stops in Arizona, Anaheim and Pittsburgh, Jones felt it was best to test the knee.

Jones also thought it was best to test the knee while batting from the right side against Astros starter Wandy Rodriguez today. Most of the discomfort he has felt over the past three weeks has been felt while batting from the right side.

While Jones missed just two games, Heyward missed six starts after leaving last Tuesday’s game against the Nationals. Having had nearly a week to rest his sore right shoulder, Heyward returned confident it would not prove to be a problem.

From top to bottom we have the best pitching staff in the majors. And this is the best pitching staff we have had since smoltz maddux glavine etc. It truely is an awesome staff. And yet the media all say how the phillies have this insane rotation. I would take our rotation over theirs

Was at today’s game and cringed at the entrance of Proctor. He threw the ball extremely well. That was no accident. He is a better pitcher than he was last year. He has earned another look, don’t you think? Can’t say enough about our bullpen. Wandy Rodriguez was something else. I promise, it looked like I could hit him. Braves hitters were totally off balance. If he had pitched the 9th inning, Houston would have won the game. That was a gift.

With inter-league play beginning this week, I was reminded today of why I am in favor of it. Growing up in Atlanta in the 60’s, as a boy I was treated to seeing legends of the game. I was in attendance on opening night at Atlanta Stadium, and as a seven year old sat mesmerized through 13 innings watching the likes of Hank Aaron, Joe Torre, Eddie Matthews, Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente. Through the years I was able to see Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Johnny Bench, well, I could go on and on, and the list would be considerable. I have a foul ball that Phil Niekro threw, and Rusty Staub hit. Today we learned of the passing of Harmon Killebrew. It dawned on me that I never got to see him play in person. The main reason for that was the lack of inter-league play. The ability of great players to go to “new” cities is great for baseball. Take your kids or grandkids out to see a “Star” or two in the coming days!

Just a thought about hindsight….how lucky are we that we still have Lowe instead of Javy Vasquez? Looking at his numbers with the Marlins….yikes. And how bout that .182 batting avg that Kelly Johnson has this year? So much for those dynamite numbers from last year. The only thing still telling about how good that Vasquez trade to the Yankees for us is whether or not Vizcanio is worth the wait.

Now is the time to jump on the Phils. We can’t play .500 ball during this stretch. The Phils are hurting and we have to go for the lead early. Prado has once again found his bat and BMac showed off his power yesterday. Hinske has had the hot bat lately, hopefully we continue to get him some ABs. Once we get Uggla going, we are going to be a very hard team to stop.

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